The Examiners Where the house is cold and empty and the garden’s overgrown, They are there. Where the letters lie unopened by a disconnected phone, They are there. Where your footsteps echo strangely on each moonlit cobblestone, Where a shadow streams behind you but the shadow’s not your own, You may think the world’s your oyster but it’s bone, bone, bone: They are there, they are there, they are there. They can parse a Latin sentence; they’re as learned as Plotinus, They are there. They’re as sharp as Ockham’s razor, they’re as subtle as Aquinas, They are there. They define us and refine us with their beta-query-minus, They’re the wall-constructing Emperors of undiscovered Chinas, They confine us, then malign us, in the end they undermine us, They are there, they are there, they are there. They assume it as an impost or they take it as a toll, They are there. The contractors grant them all that they incontinently stole They are there. They will shrivel your ambition with their quality...